


To Build a Life

by UnicornPunk



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Amnesiac Lance, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Lance (Voltron), Bullying, Dramatic Lance, Freeform, Galra Humans Alteans and co share earth, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Lance and Allura are adoptive siblings, Protective Keith (Voltron), Slow Burn, The garrison trains future magic users, and a semi happy start?, everyone gets a bayard, the holts are adorable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 12:32:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9727046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnicornPunk/pseuds/UnicornPunk
Summary: Lance wakes up on Coronado beach with no memory. He remembers his name and nothing else, but that's fine. Lance is a clever kid and with the help of a few telenovelas he can build a past for himself. He can make himself normal.The only issue with his plan? Apparently Lance is a magic user, and that's definitelynotnormal. Suddenly he's enrolled at the Garrison, a state run school devoted to training alchemists for the army.Lance doesn't want to learn to be a weapon. He just wants to go home, but it seems the state has other plans for him. Lucky for him, though, he has a guy like Keith watching his back and Lance really doesn't know what he would do without that guy.He really hopes he'll never have to find out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Why did i write this? because I'm au trash? yep. That seems about right...

* * *

 

The thing is, Lance should know by now that he isn’t normal. Normal people don’t wake up on some beach in the middle of nowhere with a memory gap a mile wide, their entire life gone except their own name, fourteen years wiped away by lord only knows what.

 (At least, he  _assumes_ that its fourteen years that he lost. That’s how old the healers told him he was, based on his height and his teeth and all the shit they measured when he first came in and Lance doesn’t have any hope of correcting them if they’re wrong because, like he said before, it’s not as if he  _remembers.)_

The memory loss is a chasm, something huge and gaping that takes up Lance’s life, but that’s fine. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s strange, right?

Because Lance has spent a lot of time watching shitty soap operas on the hospital TV (even the Spanish ones, because hey! apparently he knows Spanish!) and reading the romance novels the nurses give him. They’re full of amnesiacs, pretty women and angsty men who turn up lost and confused, who are rescued by a pretty boy or a princess or any number of people and fall in love and live  _happily-ever-after-the-end_. So it’s not like this is entirely unheard of. It can’t be if there’s entire novels written about it, right? And all those people eventually get better, so why shouldn't Lance?

Except, somewhere deep down, Lance knows that his amnesia isn't going away. Some intrinsic part of him knows that his memory loss didn’t just come out of nowhere. It’s not the result of a misfired spell or a head injury or trauma and there’s no fixing it.

(And Lance can’t shake the feeling that maybe he did something to  _deserve_ this, but he never says this aloud, lest his voicing it turn the thought into a reality.)

There’s no happily ever after here. No true love. No princess or muscled heroes coming to rescue him from the throes of his ailment.

There isn’t even a ‘the end.’

***

The doctors argue over what to do with him a lot these days.

When Lance first came in, they posted images everywhere, planted his face all over the news, hoping to find some link to Lance’s old life. ‘Do You Know This Boy?’, became the connecting phrase of Lance’s life and he ran into his face plastered across every available surface. He even found himself on the milk cartons in the hospital cafeteria which, hell, wasn’t that a laugh? Who would’ve thought that in this day and age people still did something as antiquated as that?

And the funniest part, the punchline to this entire train wreck of events that was Lance’s life?  _No one ever came looking for him._

They tried everything they could think of too.They even bring in an honest to god alchemist to slap on a healing spell in hopes it might dredge up some image from Lance’s tattered mind, but it doesn’t work.

(And Lance could have told them it wouldn’t, but he’d kept his mouth shut instead, not knowing where that knowledge came from in the first place.)

Lance’s mind was permanently broken, unraveled like the threads of a sweater.

So the doctors begin to argue, because they can’t keep Lance here forever. Six months was already too long according to the nurses.

After all, they couldn’t find anything wrong with him besides the memory loss and it wasn’t like the hospital hadn’t tried everything they could by now to fix that. So really, what was the point of him staying here at all?

Now he’s just taking up space and that’s no good. The hospital needs every bed it can get, especially with the war against Zarkon in full swing. There's no room for broken children here. 

***

His fate is decided on a Sunday. Lance is sitting cross-legged on the foot of his hospital bed, a pile of fashion magazines on the table beside him. Apparently Pink is the New Black this year and Lance just wants to know what the Old Black was to begin with.

He has his soaps  on in the background, but isn’t really paying attention to them. He’s seen this one before anyway. He knows Maria Sanchez is going to get shot in the end, but her baby is still gonna make it, and Julius Sanchez is going to raise it even though it turns out that the baby isn’t even his. (Because Maria is a cheating scuzzbag, thank you very much.)

 Good man, that Julius.

 Lance thinks he’d like his dad to be a little like Julius and decides that it doesn’t really make a difference anyway, so why not make it true? Lance Sanchez has a good ring to it anyway and he needs a last name if he’s ever going to present himself as something resembling normal.

Having a mom and a dad won’t hurt either, even if they’re made up ones like Maria and Julius Sanchez. It’s really only the presentation that matters, after all, not the truth of it. And since he’s making up stories now anyway, Lance decides that maybe Maria didn’t die at all and instead of one baby, she had twins and maybe Lance has an entire slew of siblings.

Maybe the Sanchezes go on road trips to the beach in the summertime and toss ice cubes down each other’s shirts when they’re feeling particularly snotty and maybe Lance taught his little sisters how to swim and braids their hair for them before school because that’s what good big brothers do and Lance decides he’s most definitely a Good Big Brother. And maybe when the holidays come around, Maria bakes food for everyone, even the neighbors, and then Lance and all his cousins and siblings go play soccer out in the yard. 

Lance is so fond of this thought that he decides to add it to his personal presentation along with ‘Sanchez’.

He takes out a pen, one of the blue ones emblazoned with the hospital’s logo along the side, and writes his new surname out on the pages of the magazine, in the margins of the “Pink is the New Black” nonsense he’s been skimming for the past few minutes. Lance decides he likes the way the e and the z curl together at the end  and with a curt nod, he decides enough is enough. He’s a Sanchez.

Maybe he’s a little lucky, now. Who knew what kind of shitty last name he had before all this? But now he has a pretty curly one and Lance can just imagine dotting it with little hearts and flourishes the way girls do in the movies because girls are pretty and so is Lance, so it only makes sense that he would write his name that way.

(A part of Lance wonders if he was always this conceited or if this is the lingering results of seeing his face everywhere for the first few months of his memory.)

Then Healer Dawson knocks on the door and steps in a moment later, not waiting for Lance’s invitation. He has his white robes on, the kind that make him look a little like a disgruntled napkin, and there’s a woman standing behind him. She’s all crisp lines, black hair slicked back so viciously into a tight bun that not a single crimped strand escapes the confines of her hair tie. She has on a state uniform, the alchemist seal emblazoned on the breast pocket, and carries a silver briefcase in her hands.

“Are you Lance?” She asks.

“Sanchez,” Lance adds.

“What?”

“I’m Lance Sanchez,” Lance says again, because if he’s gonna make up a past, he might as well go all out.  

That makes Healer Dawson perk up. “You remembered your last name?” He asks and Lance deflates a little.

“No. I just decided that I probably needed one. To fit in you know. Can’t leave a pretty face like this one nameless and all, even if I was only missing the end half a name.” Lance shrugs. “Decided that was one-half too much.”

“Well,  _Sanchez_ ,” the woman says, drawing out the ‘Z’ at the end with a little half smile, “I’m Amara McClain. I’ve been assigned as your guardian. You’ll be coming to live with me until one of your relatives is located.”

Lance makes a sour face. He can’t say he really has anything against Amara, but he doesn’t like the idea of leaving the hospital. The world is a big place and Lance only just decided on a last name. He maybe needs a little bit more time before venturing out of the comfort zone he’s built for himself.

But then he schools his face as quickly as he can because he doesn’t think he really has a choice in the matter and Amara seems all right. She’s an alchemist, so at the very least she has to be  _interesting_ and Lance will take what he can get, given his current situation.

“Sure,” Lance decides.

She’s no princess (and way too old to be a True Love), but Lance guesses Amara will have to do for now.

***

When Lance first woke up on the shores of Coronado Beach, he’d been in a bit of a daze, an after effect of whatever it was that caused him to lose his memory to begin with. He hadn’t really gotten a good look around then, doesn’t even remember how he ended up at the hospital to begin with, and he hasn’t been outside since.

So he gapes a little at the technicolor cityscape that greets him when he steps out the hospital doors. The children's ward suddenly seems very small.

Lance stops right outside the door, frozen in place, gripping the strap of his duffel bag tightly. The hospital gave him shades, because even in the late afternoon the world is way too bright, and looking around at the brightly clad people that hurry down the sidewalk, Lance kind of wishes they’d given him a little more. Anything would be better than the grey sweats and worn t-shirt provided by the state.

Except no, the t-shirt he’s wearing is pretty good. It’s worn soft and has a picture of a cat wrapped in a soft taco shell on the front, the word ‘purrito’ printed in red across the top. It may not be the New Black, but it’s still Lance’s favorite article of clothing.

The pants could use some work though.

Amara coughs, drawing Lance out of his reverie. In his shock he hadn’t even noticed the car pulling up in front of them and now Lance wonders how long Amara has been standing there, waiting for him to get his bearings.  She opens the door to the car, waiting for Lance to get comfortable before sliding into the seat next to him.

Lance pulls off his sunglasses. The car windows are all tinted glass and the seats smell like fresh leather. There is a divider between them and the driver and plenty of leg room. Lance realizes with a start that they’re riding in an honest to god Limo, not the stretched out kind like they have in the movies, but a limo all the same.

He presses his face up to the window and watches the city speed by. There’s so many colors, huge screens cycling through various advertisements, and more people than Lance could ever imagine.  He wants to memorize every detail.

When he glances back, Amara has something like a smile on her lips. She doesn’t say anything though. She just turns to the tablet in her hands and begins tapping out some letter or another.

Apparently they’re going to province just east of the one where Lance was found, to the place where Amara lives. Outside the car the ground turns from grass to sand and Lance realizes they’re heading into the desert.

It’s a little disappointing. He had hoped to be able to stick close to the ocean.

It takes a long while before Lance is finally able to pull his attention away from the window. They’ve been driving for two hours in silence, but Amara hasn’t seemed bothered by it. Still, Lance decides he should probably try to make friends with the lady, considering she’s going to be his guardian and all. His gaze immediately falls on the silver case tucked between her feet and the back of her seat. It’s bright silver, purple psion locks on the top of it.

“Is that your Bayard?” Lance asks, nodding to the case.

Amara nods, pulling the case into her lap. Lance thinks it's smaller than it should be. Bayards are magical weapons, the tools that allow Alchemists to cast spells. Something like that shouldn’t fit on a dinner plate.

“Do you want to see it?” Amara offers.

Lance nods excitedly, scooting a little closer to the woman’s side of the car. She presses her thumb to the psion locks and they hum lowly before clicking open. The Bayard inside isn’t like the ones Lance has seen on TV. Those ones are big and glowing, heavy looking. This one looks a little bit like it could be made out of plastic.

Then Amara picks it up out of its case. The lights along the side flash a pale purple, synching with its wielders energy, and Lance has to admit it’s a little spectacular the way the Bayard seems to mold to Amara’s hand, the way it seems to become an extension of her being.

She flicks her wrist and a purple blade sprouts from the base of the hilt. Lance’s eyes widen; the entire thing reminds him a little bit of a lightsaber. Before the blade’s existence can really stabilize though, Amara calls it back. The lights on the side of the Bayard go dark and she tucks it back into the case.

“That’s awesome,” Lance says.

***

 

They arrive at the Garrison after a few hours, when night is beginning to turn the desert cold. The place is huge, great stone walls rising around squat buildings. Amara tells him the place is owned by the military, but Lance could’ve figured that out just from looking at the buildings. Only the military could build something so Spartan.

Apparently the Garrison is split into two sides. Amara and Lance will live on the western half with the other civilians, but Amara works on the eastern side training future Alchemists. A wall sits between the two halves, guards watching every entry point. Apparently untrained Alchemists are dangerous and need to be kept away from the general population and civilians are only allowed to cross to the alchemists' side when they have an escort.

It all seems a little excessive to Lance, but he doesn’t say so aloud.

They walk into the administrative building where Amara is immediately greeted by a trio of adults, all dressed in alchemist uniforms. Two of the three are Galra. The other is a human male. The human hugs Amara tightly and laughs, jostling her a bit. With his glasses and white hair, he makes Lance think of a younger Doc Brown.

Lance hangs back while the four talk, but after a moment he notices one of the Galra looking at him. This one is sturdier looking than his companion, thick bones where the other is sinew. He has a large scar over his left eye and Lance wonders how he avoided being blinded by the blow. The man steps towards Lance and Lance immediately recoils, dwarfed by the Galra’s immense size.

“Is this your new ward?” the man asks, interrupting Amara’s current conversation.

Amara glances back at Lance, looking a little guilty for having forgotten him. “Oh, yes. This is Lance Sanchez.” She gestures to the two men beside her, “Lance, this is Samuel Holt and Antok. And that cinderblock is Kolivan.”

Kolivan crouches down in front of Lance and extends a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Lance takes the offered hand. It’s warm and soft, a little like touching a cat’s paw, and Lance immediately breaks out smiling. He turns the Galra’s hand over so that he can run his fingers through the fur on the man's wrists.

“You’re so soft!” Lance yelps.

“ _Lance,”_ Amara snaps, making to pull Lance away from Kolivan, but the Galra stops her with a wave.

“He’s fine, McClain. The kid didn’t mean it the wrong way.” His attention turns back to Lance, “Have you ever seen a Galra before, Lance?”

At that, Lance pauses, mulling it over. There weren’t any at the hospital, which, now that Lance thinks about it, seems kind of odd. There were a lot of Galra in this part of the state, but maybe they just didn’t like hospitals?

“Only on TV,” Lance finally decides. “The main love interest in  _Red Hearts_ is Galran.”

Kolivan snorts before standing, becoming a looming block of shadow once more. “Well, now you've finally met a real one,” he says, ruffling Lance’s hair. Lance puffs his cheeks out in annoyance, but doesn’t tell the man to stop. Sure he’s ruining the look Lance spent a half hour perfecting, but he’s also a nice guy, so Lance decides to let him get away with it just this once.

Before Lance can say another word to Kolivan, Antok interrupts the exchange. "We'll go ahead and let you two get settled in then," he says and the three move to leave. Samuel Holt waves at them excitedly before trotting after the two Galra. He looks small next to the others' collective bulk. 

Amara lets out a tired sigh, staring after the three men, before laying her hand on Lance’s shoulder and steering him towards the exit.

“Let’s get you home, then,” she says and Lance can’t help but smile at Amara’s word choice.

 

Because maybe Lance isn’t normal yet, maybe he’s not even close, but at the very least he has a  _home_ now. He’s no longer tucked away in the furthest corner of the hospital’s children’s ward, waiting for someone— _anyone_ —to come and claim him. Nope, now he’s going  _home._

 

 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> And as always, if you want constant updates on how fics are coming along and stuff or if you just want to buff my ego, you can always follow me on tumblr at [unicornpunk-mifrunner.tumblr.com](https://unicornpunk-mifrunner.tumblr.com) or on twitter at [Mif_Runner](https://twitter.com/MiF_Runner)


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